The project is administered under the Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM – the Irish Sea Fisheries Board) National Development Plan. It is said that 4,063 cod have been tagged and released in the Celtic Sea by Institute scientists working aboard commercial fishing vessels from Dunmore East. It is designed to study the growth and migration of both the inshore juvenile component and the offshore adult spawning component of the stock.
Macdara Ó Cuaig, a scientist with the Fisheries Science Services team of the Marine Institute, told that to date around 10 percent of the tagged fish have been returned by a combination of fishermen, anglers and processors from Ireland, UK, Spain and France. He informed that the success of this project is that every fish that is recaptured and reported adds its own piece of information to the jigsaw and helps us get a better understanding of the stock.
Macdara explained that while the recapture of DST tagged cod to date has provided some interesting data, the amount of information can be limited if the fish is recaptured shortly after release. He added that a fish reported to them last month with a conventional tag not only confirmed the rapid growth associated with Celtic Sea cod, but also has the unique distinction of being caught three times and released twice.
As a result this fish had grown 33 cm in fifteen months highlights the fact that Celtic Sea cod have high growth rates—in this case an almost nine-fold increase in weight in the first ten months since its initial release, followed by a slower but still significant increase over the next five months to 1.9 kilos.
